


cards on the table

by Pensysto



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors Spoilers, Alternative Perspective, Canon Compliant, Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pensysto/pseuds/Pensysto
Summary: “You know what I hate most in the world?” he asks, looking back up at Junpei. “I got four things. Hope, faith, love, and luck.”Junpei’s eyebrows tick up higher with every word. Not a surprise, really, since Aoi’s making himself sound like the edgiest thirteen-year-old in the world.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	cards on the table

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laurea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurea/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Laurea!!  
> The prompt that I went with was looking at canon scenes from another POV; I decided to go with Santa’s conversation with Junpei about the bookmark. It was really fun to get into Aoi's head for a bit and figure out what he might have been thinking during this scene. I'm sorry I wasn't able to include Ace or Akane as much -- it's a little hard when everyone's split up! Thank you for the awesome prompt -- I hope you enjoy! <3

The bookmark is heavy in his hands.

“Hey, Junpei,” he calls. “You got a minute?”

Junpei startles, spinning away from the display case and giving Aoi a wide-eyed look. Aoi does his best to smother his laugh; from Junpei’s scowl, he doesn’t succeed.

“Here,” he says, still grinning. “Take this.”

And he holds out the bookmark.

Akane had explained this to him a few times, and by a few times he means a few hundred. Every move was planned, every domino of the timeline carefully stacked to form a picture. When the two of them will be watching Lotus hack her way through the terminal’s password in the laboratory, Clover will be having a breakdown in the operating room, and only the bookmark and a few kind words from Junpei will stop her. 

“What is this?” Junpei asks, squinting at the bookmark.

“I found it in between some of the cushions on the sofa,” Aoi lies, easy as breathing, like he hadn’t bought it at a dollar store last month. “Pretty sure it ain’t gonna be any help to us, but I figured we might as well hang onto it anyway.” He wiggles it in front of Junpei again; how had Akane described this kid again? Like a smart golden retriever. He’ll be a little suspicious, sure, but he’ll take it because he can’t resist a potential piece of the puzzle --

Junpei frowns. “Then why don’t you hold onto it?”

Aoi grins on reflex, cursing Akane silently. Coming up with a reason hadn’t been in the script.

His eyes flick back down to the bookmark as he weighs his options. Light’s leaf words ring in his head, the way they always do, echoing in time with his little sister’s screams.

Something close to the truth, then. Never said he was good at improvising.

“You know what I hate most in the world?” he asks, looking back up at Junpei. “I got four things. Hope, faith, love, and luck.”

Junpei’s eyebrows tick up higher with every word. Not a surprise, really, since Aoi’s making himself sound like the edgiest thirteen-year-old in the world. Of every sacrifice he’s had to make for this game, his reputation hurts the most.

“Hope, faith, love, and luck?” Junpei repeats, disbelieving.

“Damn straight,” Aoi says.

“And you… hate those things?”

“Yeah.” All in, all in. A gambler on the Titanic has nothing to lose. “You got a problem with that?”

“Uh, not really,” Junpei says. “But... “ He hesitates over the words for a second, glancing around like Lotus will come and save him any moment. “What does a _bookmark_ have to do with any of that?”

A good question. Aoi had asked the same thing, when the plan was first laid out in front of him.

Akane had smiled, that same enigmatic smile she always did. “Clover needs it,” she had said.

“So why don’t I give it to Clover?” he’d argued. He actually knew what Clover had been through, what she was feeling. Hellbent on avenging her sibling, no matter the cost -- Aoi could relate. Surely he could talk her out of it better than Akane’s childhood boyfriend could.

“You already understand Clover,” Akane said, echoing his own thoughts. “Junpei _needs_ to understand her. So he can understand _us_.”

Aoi doesn’t want Junpei to understand him. But Akane was firm, so here he stands, the bookmark held loosely between his fingers.

“Well,” he starts. “See, each leaf on the four-leaf clover has a meaning to it. Okay?” He steps closer to Junpei, pointing at each leaf in turn -- one, two, three, four. Junpei cranes his head forward to see. “And the meaning is pretty much those four words.”

Junpei doesn’t say anything.

“It’s like… a flower language,” Aoi says, and immediately he can hear Akane in his ears with _actually, clover is a part of the Fabaceae family, like peas and legumes_. “I guess it’s not a flower, is it. So… a leaf language, I guess.

 _Those words are leaf words_ , Light had said, carefully handing them out. Akane had taken hers with wide eyes, like he was handing her the crown jewels. _They’re a promise between friends._

“Yeah,” he continues, tapping each leaf of the clover again. “You could call ‘em leaf words.”

“Leaf words,” Junpei echoes, staring down at the bookmark.

 _Promise me, Junpei_ , he thinks. _Promise me you’ll do this right._

“I want you to take it, okay?” he says, holding it out. “Just touchin’ it gives me the creeps.”

Junpei doesn’t move. Lost in thought, the way he was back in the lobby, when he’d hesitated over the doors and it had all nearly gone wrong before it even started.

If the kid won’t make a decision, then Aoi will make it for him. He shoves it towards Junpei, startling him out of his musings. “Take the damn thing, all right?” he barks.

Junpei looks at him for a long moment, eyes searching for something Aoi doesn’t know. Whatever it is, he doesn’t think Junpei finds it. “All right, sure,” he says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “I’ll take it.”

He tucks it into the pocket of his sweatshirt, and a weight lifts off of Aoi’s shoulders. That’s his job done.

“Man,” Aoi says, grinning. “I feel a lot better now. That thing was a real pain, you know?”

Junpei doesn’t smile back. “Do you, uh,” he says. “Really hate those words that much?”

“Yeah, well.” He can feel his smile slipping. “They can all betray you, you know? Hope, faith, love…”

Luck. He’s gonna need a hell of a lot of luck, these next few hours.

“Even your destiny,” he finishes instead.

He meets Junpei’s gaze, and not for the first time, he wonders why it was him. Why he was the one to save Akane, take her hand and lead her out of the fire, when Aoi couldn’t even make it through the door. The heat of the incinerator burns in his chest.

“Well,” he says, desperate to get rid of the taste of ash. “That’s not my only reason.”

“What?”

“That’s not the only reason I hate the four leaf clover,” Aoi elaborates. “You know, I just can’t bring myself to like the number four.”

Junpei laughs, caught off guard. “What,” he says, “worried about the four horsemen?”

“Nah.” Aoi waves a hand at him. “C’mon, man, that’s just silly. Maybe back in the Dark Ages, that kinda crap scared people. This is the twenty-first century. I’m a twenty-first century guy.”

“Okay, sure,” Junpei says. He leans back against the display case, raising an eyebrow. “So then why do you hate four so much?”

Aoi shrugs, wishing he was close enough to the wall to lean against it. Standing in the middle of the room wasn’t much fun, when Junpei got the whole display case to himself. “‘Cause it’s a half-ass number,” he says. “Not the best, or the worst. That’s why.”

“... What.” From the flat tone, it was clear Junpei had been expecting something way more meaningful.

“Nine is a way better number,” Aoi continues, ever eager to let him down. “So what if it’s last place, right? Least it’s not some lameass middle number.”

Speaking of nines, the other four had probably made it to the baccarat puzzle right now. Seven knew how to play, and Light was smart enough to pick it up quick; it shouldn’t trip them up for long. Simple enough game, really. Nine’s strongest; zero’s weakest.

He rubs a hand over his bracelet. Time to stop thinking in metaphors, before he drives himself insane. “You play?” he asks Junpei.

“Play?” Junpei echoes, and Aoi realizes too late that he hadn’t specified anything. “What, you mean like… the stock market?”

Well, that was specific enough for the both of them. “Nah, that’s not what I mean,” he says. “Why the hell would you think that?”

The look on Junpei’s face very clearly says he’d just tossed out a random guess. As much as Aoi delights in seeing it, he figures he should toss the guy a bone and clarify he meant gambling.

But --

Stock market, huh? He could have a good conversation about that. It wasn’t in the script, but hell, most of this conversation wasn’t. And Junpei had asked, so it wasn’t his fault if he went a little off script, now was it, Akane.

“I mean, I do stocks, too,” he says. _Ask me, ask me, ask me._

“ _You_?” Junpei echoes incredulously -- hook, line, sinker. “A _stockbroker_?”

“Yeah,” Aoi says. He puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, watching as Junpei’s eyes trek across his outfit. “Got a problem with that?”

“No,” Junpei says. “You just… don’t look like the type.”

“It’s just like gambling,” Aoi says with a shrug. “You know? All you gotta do is bet on the winning horse. Nothing that hard about it.” Especially not when your little sister’s as psychic as they come.

“You sound pretty confident,” Junpei says. “So are you betting on, uh, winning horses?”

“Yeah, ‘course I am,” he says. “You remember a couple years back, when the stock for Cradle Pharmaceuticals shot through the roof? Stacked a few bills over that, if I do say so myself.”

Right now, Hongou was surrounded with slot machines and unfriendly faces he had no hope of recognizing. Take a chance, roll the dice, twist the lock and start the incinerator.

Maybe Junpei won’t recognize Cradle. Not now, at least. But there’s a note in the other room’s safe that Akane wrote, and a puzzle in the cargo room that Hongou can’t solve, and a missing bracelet from a dead man’s wrist tucked into the murderer’s coat pocket.

What’s one more clue, to help him along?

“Hey!” Lotus shouts from the other side of the room, brandishing a tile at them; evidently, she’s grown tired of solving the puzzles by herself. “How long are you two gonna stand around wasting time? Stop screwing around.”

“Well,” Aoi says, “the lady has spoken.” He’d set the clocks himself, he knew just how little time they had, and there was no use spending it all talking to Junpei. This door alone, they still had to get through the entire kitchen. “We’d better get back to work before we _really_ piss her off. I don’t want her beating me up.”

Junpei opens his mouth to say something, but Aoi’s already turned around, hands in empty pockets as he meanders past Lotus to poke through the drawers again. He’s done all he can for now.

Hope, faith, love, and luck.

It’ll have to be enough.


End file.
